Deep Well Words

The poet reads letters of the alphabet
in gestures of passengers
passing through the airport,
in motions of fireflies at night,
in a murmuration of starlings,
and wrinkles on the backs of hands.

The poet wields a sharpened yellow pencil
to excavate shards of shattered language.
The poet lays aside the pencil and kneels;
unable to assemble words
that convey the astonishment
of the ineffable filtering through the ordinary,
the way sunlight flickers
through the green leaves of white birch trees.